Cognitive ability and delinquent behavior among inner-city youth: a life-course analysis of main,mediating, and interaction effects

Drawing on the emerging life-course paradigm in criminological theory, this study examines the relationship between cognitive ability and delinquent behavior within a sample of inner-city youth. The results indicate that net of statistical controls, cognitive ability maintains a robust inverse relationship with the likelihood of the onset of delinquency, the early onset of delinquency, and the persistence of delinquency during the 18-year period covered by the dataset. Furthermore, cognitive ability mediates the effect of concentrated disadvantage on both the onset and early onset of delinquency. Overall, the results of this study suggest that cognitive ability is an important criminogenic risk factor that has important implications for both correctional interventions and the continued development of structural and multilevel theories of crime.     

Effects of victim's and defendant's physical attractiveness on the perception of responsibility in an ambiguous domestic violence case

A 2 × 4 × 4 factorial design was used to assess the effects of physical attractiveness in a domestic violence case. The attractiveness of both the defendant and victim were varied along four levels. Subjects were asked to read a domestic violence scenario where pictures of the defendant and victim were varied according their physical attractiveness. Results showed no significant effect of physical attractiveness in a juridic decision-making process in domestic violence. However, there were significant differences between male and female subjects in the sentencing of the defendant. This difference did not hold true for finding the defendant guilty or not guilty.     

Pop culture portrayals of capital punishment: A review ofDead Man Walking andAmong the Lowest of the Dead

American Journal of Criminal Justice -     

The victim syndrome

Her books include Women and War (1987)and most recently Power Trips and Other Journeys,a collection of essays.     

Women,Wives and the Campaign Against Pit Closures in County Durham: Understanding the Vane Tempest Vigil

The majority of the women who campaigned to save the Vane Tempest Colliery from closure in 1993 were involved because of their political understanding and allegiances rather than as a consequence of their practical involvement in mining life. Even those women who were married to miners did not conform to the stereotypical conception of ‘miner's wife’. However, the supporting labour movement and the media persisted in conceptualizing the Women's Vigil through romantic and masculinist discourses of miners and mining communities which could only locate the women as ‘wives’, which confined the campaign within historical stereotypes no longer appropriate to the actual situation and which persistently set the idea of socialism against that of feminism. This not only situated the women's campaign as secondary and subject to that of the NUM but it also subverted the possibilities of the women fully articulating their own experience and understanding within the campaign. The situation was further complicated by memories of the miners' strike of 1984-5 in which women played such an important role. One aspect of this role, that of maintaining mining families in the face of hardship, continued to inform understanding of the women's role in the fight to prevent closure, although it was no longer appropriate.The Women's Vigil engaged with a much wider set of concerns and with a wider range of individuals and groups than did that of the miners themselves. There were serious possibilities for broadening the political campaign around the women's slogan of ‘Jobs, community and environment’ which were never fully exploited because of the difficulties of admitting that women could inhabit any position other than that of ‘miners’ wives'.This experience of the Vane Tempest Vigil indicates the significance and the centrality of gender issues within class based political action.